


Only in Storybooks

by Lysces



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Dark Lord, Dystopia, Gen, Politics, Undecided Relationship(s), racism (sort of), repurposed Order of the Phoenix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2100093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lysces/pseuds/Lysces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood elitists like Lucius Malfoy are determined to keep the Wizarding community and gene pool free of the taint of Muggleborns, but Hermione Granger is not about to let him or anyone else take away her newfound ability to be extraordinary.</p>
<p>Inspired by a post on tumblr about a young Hermione reading Roald Dahl's Matilda and trying - with astounding success - to move things with her mind alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Hermione Granger’s nose was in a book.

  
Hermione Jean Granger did not have many friends, which was a nice way of saying that she had none at all. At nine years old, she was a smallish child capable of stretching to four feet and one inch. But she rarely did.

  
Most often, her bushy brown head was bowed over a book. She certainly paid more mind to her books than she did to most of her peers, who seemed generally put off by her tendency to know things. They were even more put off at her suggestion that they too could know these things if they ever chose to _read_.

  
Hermione would devour one book after another. At the moment, she was rereading an old favorite. She had first encountered the little bookish girl who could move objects with her mind when she was five years old, and they had been immediate friends. They even shared peculiar names: Hermione and Matilda. When Hermione was five, she had tried to imitate Matilda’s powers, planning on tripping up the boy who had stolen her crayons. It had not worked, and Hermione had given up.

  
As she grew up and became more knowledgeable, she saw the foolishness of her childish attempts, for surely there were no such things as telekinetics. Such people would exist only in storybooks.

  
Maybe it was because it was late. Maybe her tiredness paired with her slight sentimentality over her old friend Matilda and fostered a foolish hope. Regardless, she looked up and stared across her room to her towering bookshelf and concentrated hard on her dictionary. She wanted it to fall off the shelf.

  
The dictionary fell off the shelf.  Life was never the same.

* * *

 

The wizard strode to the end of the hall and passed through the door without raising his hand or even so much as breaking his stride. The cool darkness of his office awaited deep within the Department of Mysteries. To the outside observer, it seemed as though he passed through the depths of the realms of chaos to get to his quiet domain, but his completely unflapped demeanor showed how commonplace he found the mysteries of the magical world.

  
The wonderful thing about the Department of Mysteries was that its mysteries were only mysterious to those outside the department. From the prophecies foretelling the fate of Wizardkind until the end of time, to the research labs pushing the barriers of what magic is capable of, to the carefully accrued information on every magical being alive, the Department of Mysteries housed the best kept secrets of the Ministry of Magic.

  
He turned into a dark green corridor that deadended in a wall upon which hung a silver-framed painting. Within that painting, a stern-faced old wizard in heavy black robes read over a scroll that spilled over from where it rested in his lap to trail down to the floor. He did not look up as he recited, “What dear thing is most worth guarding?”

  
“Magic for the magic,” the wizard answered, businesslike. “Magic is might.”

  
The old wizard nodded brusquely, and his painting swung away to reveal the doorway. In the throne-like chair behind the glossy desk within the imposing office, the wizard had a prime view of the manifesto emblazoned on the opposite wall. He did not need to look at it though, for he knew it by heart. It was his grandfather who had drafted it. Ophiuchus now guarded the entranceway to his old post, eternally reading and musing over his legacy.

  
Ophiuchus had known that there was no power greater, no treasure dearer to a wizard than his magic. It was what gave him value, what set him above the mindless herd of wallowing Muggles. He had come to these realizations in his youth after discovering that he had once had an elder brother who, to his family’s horror and repulsion, had not been endowed with that great inheritance of Wizardkind. It was an abhorrent secret that was carefully concealed from all those outside their Noble House.

  
He believed absolutely in the need to keep magic strong in wizard blood, and in order for this to be ensured, it was only logical that the gene pools—and by necessity the societies—of wizards and Muggles be kept forever separate, lest the mixing of magic and non-magic blood dilute the potency of the ancient lines of wizards. By his time, the Statute of Secrecy was already well established, so the Wizarding world was already fundamentally apart from the Muggle world, but they still overlaid in places, places that undermined the separation that was so desperately needed.

  
But what could be done about the Muggleborns?

  
Ophiuchus was fortunate to have many resources at his disposal, for his family was wealthy and influential. He sponsored a bit of research, a couple campaigns, and a few newspapers, and suddenly, the Ministry was establishing the Muggleborn Registration Commission with Ophiuchus at the helm. The MRC had brought about the removal of only a handful of Muggleborns found guilty of undermining the welfare of wizards, but it had intimidated many others, who had chosen to forsake the Wizarding world of their own account.

  
It took many years to completely phase out the Muggleborns. Ophiuchus did not live to see the day when Hogwarts letters were no longer sent to unsuspecting Muggle families. His work was not complete at the time of his death, but his son, and then his grandson, carried on his noble mission to create a society safe from the taint of the impure.

  
Lucius Malfoy was proud to carry on his grandfather’s legacy. As the head of the now highly classified Muggleborn Registration Commission, it was his duty to find every single Muggle capable of magic and ensure that they never threatened his world, the world that he sought only to make safe for his son.  By any means necessary.


	2. To Hogwarts

September 1st dawned a little chilly, but that was not unusual in London.  When Harry’s mother went to wake him up for breakfast, she found the eleven-year-old already dressed and nearly vibrating with excitement.  As he rushed past her and somehow managed not to tumble down the stairs, she smiled and moved on to the next bedroom.

Violet took a little more coaxing to get out of bed.  She was very sour because she still had three years to wait until she could join her big brother at Hogwarts.  Lily, having anticipated this moodiness, had been sure to make her girl’s favorite breakfast that morning.  The pouty eight-year-old sat mutilating her pancakes for a few minutes before giving into the buttery, syrupy temptation as she always would.

Lily was Vanishing the maple syrup out of her daughter’s red hair when the sound of three polite knocks reached them.

“That’ll be Remus,” James announced, glancing at the clock.  “Disgustingly punctual, as usual.”

Lily regarded her husband’s motionlessness and sighed, “Harry, would you go let him in?”

“Yes, Mum.”  Harry scampered out of the kitchen, and soon the sound of his greeting carried back to them.  “You’re just in time for pancakes.  Vi’s gone and got syrup in her hair….”

Harry, still moving faster than he normally did, rematerialized to start the dishes, not even offering his usual complaints about having to do them by hand when Dad could do them in a second with magic.

Lily declared Violet’s hair unstickied and sent her back upstairs to finish getting ready.  She almost ran right into Remus as he came into the kitchen.

“Good morning, Violet,” he offered with a smile.

“Good morning, Uncle Remus,” Violet returned, glancing over her shoulder but not stopping.  Despite her ire over being left out this year, she was still more than a little excited to go to Kings’ Cross for the first time, and she most certainly did not want to have to go in her rumpled purple pajamas.

Remus sat in the chair that James kicked out for him and, after declining the offer of pancakes, said, “So, today’s the big day, isn’t it?  Excited, Harry?”

Harry nodded.  “I’m gonna be in Gryffindor like you and Dad,” he announced.

“I’m sure you will, sweetheart,” Lily declared.  “But the other Houses are probably alright too, so you’ll do well wherever you end up.”  James opened his mouth, but his contradiction died unspoken at the Look he received from his friend and from his wife.

When Violet reappeared, Lily announced that it was time that they go, unless Harry wanted to miss his train.  His heavy black trunk waited by the door, the owl’s cage perched on top of it.  The little black-feathered Lucy was asleep on her perch.  She was a mild-tempered thing, purchased for Harry just a few weeks ago because Violet had been unwilling to part with the family’s snowy owl, Hedwig.

Harry’s arms wrapped tightly around Lily’s waist.  “Bye, Mum,” he said.  “I promise I’ll write loads.”

“Have fun, and stay safe sweetheart,” Lily ordered.  “I love you.”

“Love you too, Mum,” Harry said as he released her.  “Bye, Uncle Remus.”

“Have a good year, Harry,” the weary werewolf returned as the boy moved past him to where his father and sister waited by the door.

James took the trunk, and Violet snatched up the cage.  They would be home before lunch, so they needed not say goodbye.  The door to the Potter’s flat clicked shut behind them, and their footsteps and voices could be heard as they descended the stairs.

Lily sighed.  “Thanks for coming, Remus.  I really appreciate it.”  They both knew how much Lily hated having random members of the Order showing up at her doorstep and condescending to her.

“It’s no trouble,” he assured her.  “Is he still asleep?

She nodded.  There had been no need to wake her two-year-old early on such a hectic morning.  Harry had said his goodbyes to the toddler the previous evening.  “There’s still been no change.”

Remus noted her worried frown and did his best not to match the expression.  Someone had to keep a positive outlook on little Colby’s progress.  “He’s too young to be concerned about.  Some children don’t show their first signs until they’re eight or nine!  There’s still plenty of time for his magic to manifest itself.”

With a distracted wave of her illicit wand, Lily cleaned up the last of the remnants of breakfast.  Her frown had deepened.  “What if this is my fault?”

That’s what always went unspoken by the Order members who were often stationed at the Potters’.  For years, Lily had steadfastly ignored their looks of pity mixed with disapproval.  She knew she should appreciate their presence, for they protected her and her children whenever James was away.  There were people out there who, if they discovered her, would want her dead, and one uneducated witch with an arsenal of ten or twelve practical spells was no match for them.

Among her kind, she was very lucky, having ensnared the heart of a wealthy pureblood and therefore ensured herself protection from the secret workings of the Ministry.

Or perhaps she was very foolish, choosing the Wizarding world and the danger it held over a peaceful life among Muggles.

Or perhaps she was very selfish, creating half-blood children who were at increased risk for Squibhood because of her weak blood.  Harry had been a little over a year old when he had first showed signs of being a wizard by making things move or light up.  Violet had been even younger.  Each time had been a great relief.

Colby was approaching three, and Lily feared that she had cursed her son to follow in her footsteps, either hiding amongst wizards or leaving the world into which he had been born.  What if he could never go to Hogwarts, or get a job, or even just stroll down Diagon Alley in the daytime?  What would his life be like?

Regardless of Remus’ reassurances, Lily knew that she would never forgive herself if her child became an outcast.

 

* * *

 

Harry and his sister both held tight to their father, lest they be lost in the hustle and bustle of Kings’ Cross Station.  The towering crowd and the noise of trains and voices heightened the excitement of the day to the point that Harry’s stomach filled with very restless frogs.

These were Muggles surrounding them, and the Potters looked no different than anyone else in the station.  Having lived among Muggles for all of their lives, they were experts at blending in.

However, not everyone in the station seemed to boast that skill.  Harry caught sight of a family of redheads that were most definitely wizards unfamiliar with Muggle fashion.  They headed in the same direction, the mother talking a little too loudly for subtlety.

“ _Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters this way!_ ” she directed her brood.  Harry heard Violet gasp as the older boys began disappearing through the brick wall that separated platforms nine and ten.

“That’s so cool,” she enthused.  “How come nobody sees?”

“There’s a spell on the entrance,” James explained, “that keeps Muggles from noticing.”  The three Potters came upon the redheaded woman, who had only two children left waiting for their go at the barrier.

“Good day,” James called out, and the woman turned to them and offered a smile.

“First time to Hogwarts, dear?” she asked Harry, who nodded.  “It’s Ron’s first time as well.”  She indicated her son, whose friendly face was covered in freckles.  Ron nodded to Harry before taking off through the barrier to the hidden platform.

“Hi,” said the little girl who was probably Ron’s sister.  She was looking at Violet.  “I’m too young to go too, you know.”

Violet smiled, and as the girls were exchanging introductions, they crossed over from the world of Muggles to that of wizards and caught sight of the magnificent Hogwarts Express.  In a whirlwind of excitement, parents helped their offspring load trunks onto the train and bade last minute goodbyes.  At ten o’clock sharp, the Hogwarts Express lurched into motion.

Harry’s face was pressed to the glass of the window as he watched his father and sister waving goodbye.  The train turned a corner, and they were gone.

Harry took advantage of the solitude of his empty compartment to change into his robes.  He then sat back down, uncertain of what he should do now.

He was not left wondering for long, as someone knocked on the open door to his compartment.  He looked up to see the redheaded boy from before, Ron.

“Do you mind?” he asked tentatively.  “Everywhere else is full.”

“Sure,” Harry said, a little relieved that he would not pass the whole journey to Hogwarts alone.

“I’m Ron, by the way,” he added as he sat across from Harry.  “Ron Weasley.”

“I’m Harry, Harry Potter.”

There was a moment where neither boy knew quite where to carry the conversation, but then Harry asked, “You have older brothers at Hogwarts?”

Ron nodded and said matter-of-factly, “Percy and Fred and George are all still at Hogwarts, and Bill and Charlie have already graduated.  My sister Ginny will start next year.  You?”

“It’s just me this year,” Harry answered.  “Violet will start in three years, and she’s not very happy about that.”

“Neither is Ginny.”

“What House do you want to be in?”

“Gryffindor, definitely!” exclaimed Ron.  “All my family’s been in Gryffindor, and it’s the best House.”

“My dad was in Gryffindor too,” Harry explained, “so I think that’s where I want to go.”

“We’ll be in Gryffindor together,” Ron declared, pleased already with his new classmate.  From that moment on, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley were friends.  It also didn’t hurt that a few minutes later Harry bought enough candy to feed a small army for the two of them to share as the train sped along towards Hogwarts, a looming behemoth of possibility.

 

* * *

 

The first years, fresh out of their boats and having just experienced their first lecture from Deputy Headmistress Professor McGonagall, filed after the tall witch into the Great Hall.  Students sat at four long tables and loudly reunited with friends and recounted their summers.  At the Head Table at the front of the room, adults sat and watched the new students approach.  Harry and Ron joined their classmates in gaping up at the ceiling, which was somehow the very animate likeness of the sky.

They stopped at the front of the hall and beheld an old, battered hat sitting upon a stool.  So this was the Sorting Hat his father had told them about.  Harry stood silently through the Hat’s song, too preoccupied with his anticipation to take much note of what it was saying.  Then the song ended, and the Sorting began.

Harry stood beside Ron as the group of children around them gradually shrank.   After “ _Patil, Padma_ ” had gone to the Ravenclaw table, “ _Patil, Parvati_ ” had been Sorted into Gryffindor, and “ _Parkinson, Pansy_ ” had been deemed a Slytherin, Professor McGonagall called out, “Potter, Harry.”

Harry approached the front and sat on the stool, trying not to be intimidated by the thousands of eyes fixed upon him.  The Hat touched his head.

“ _Gryffindor!_ ” it screamed, and applause erupted from the table decked in red and gold.

Relieved, Harry hopped down out of the spotlight and went to sit near a couple of familiar redheads who were waving him over.  It was not long before Ron joined them, Headmaster Riddle gave a quick speech, and then Harry’s very first Hogwarts feast began.


	3. Seen and Heard

Two years after discovering she could make a heavy book topple off a shelf, Hermione no longer considered herself a telekinetic.  That title was far too narrow to encompass her current capabilities.

She could light up dark rooms and unlock locked doors.  She could make words appear on paper without touching a pencil.  Once, when her pen had exploded over her homework, she had willed the mess out of existence.  She could make flowers grow faster and bigger.  And if a furry brown spider had happened to climb onto her hand while she was kneeling beside the flower, it was purely by accident that she set the poor creature on fire.

That made her much more than a telekinetic, but what was she exactly?  ‘Magician’ implied trickery, ‘sorceress’ and ‘enchantress’ sounded too grandiose, and ‘witch’ was offensive and carried some disturbing connotations of devilish affiliation.  She did not remember signing away her soul; besides, it didn’t seem like a thing one should be permitted to do officially as a minor.

Even if Hermione did not have a label for herself, she was well aware that she was different from those around her.  She had never gotten anyone else to acknowledge such abilities, and she had never caught anyone doing anything that should be impossible.  Already used to being a bit separated from her peers, she was not unable to handle this additional point of uniqueness.  She knew it was prudent not to publicize it, so she did not.

On the first day of September, Hermione was the first student to enter Mr. Youngman’s English class.  She had not dawdled as she walked there from the crowded assembly hall where a droning principal had attempted to welcome the disinterested students to the new school year.  As her peers caught up with their friends after the long months of summer, Hermione made sure to claim a desk in the front of the classroom.  Her light pink bag went under her chair, her new notebook and freshly sharpened pencils onto her desk, and her eyes to her reflection in the window.

From her favorite sneakers to her pale blue jeans to her pink sweater zipped up over her t-shirt, Hermione thought she looked okay.  She purposely didn’t look much higher than that—she already knew what the permanent cloud of brown frizz hovering around her head looked like.

She started when a couple of girls came through the door, smiling and chatting amiably.  Their eyes slid over Hermione as they walked past her desk, noticing but not acknowledging.  Hermione fidgeted.

The room gradually filled, the teacher finally making an appearance right before the last stragglers slunk in.  Mr. Youngman was balding, bespectacled, and a little jumpy, but Hermione thought he seemed nice enough.

“Good morning, class!” the man beamed, and Hermione smiled right back.  “Read any good books over the summer?”

Hermione’s hand shot straight up, for she had indeed read several good books over the summer.  Someone snickered behind her, and Mr. Youngman blinked and adjusted his glasses before asking her, “Yes?  And what’s your name?”

“I’m Hermione Granger,” she said primly.  “And I read nineteen books over the summer, fourteen of which I would call ‘good’.  Let’s see.”  She began to tick them off on her fingers.  “I read _The Secret Garden_ and quite liked that, as well as _A Separate Peace_ and _Little Women_.  I also read _Animal Farm_ , _Lord of the Flies,_ and _Les Miserables_ , but I didn’t like those quite as much, although they were fairly well-written.  Those might be all the ones you’ve heard of.  There were additionally _The Way West_ , _The Caine Mutiny, The Collected Stories of_ —”

“Okay, okay, that’s great!” Youngman interrupted to the amusement of the class.  “Wow, that’s…really something, Miss Granger.  Great job, I love to see kids who are enthusiastic about reading.  Anyone else?”

His strained smile was met with titters, and Hermione slumped down in her chair.

“Alright,” the teacher said after what seemed to Hermione an eternity.  “We’ll just jump right in then.  I hope more of you turn out to like reading, for if you look on the second page of your syllabus—”

Hermione half-listened to him and half-wished to disappear.

A girl behind her shrieked, followed by shouts and gasps of alarm from all directions.

“ _She just disappeared_!”

“What?”

“Where’d she go?”

“ _What happened_?”

“What’s going on?”

“But she was _right there_!”

Hermione felt her eyes widen and instinctively jumped to her feet—just in time, for her classmates converged on the space she had just vacated.  She looked down at herself just to confirm that she was invisible and was unexpectedly dizzied by the missing body.  _Breathe_ , she urged herself, and looked back up.

She didn’t try to go back for her bag, merely slipped out the open door.  She might have been able to return to visibility if she made an effort, but every instinct in her was screaming to _just go_.

Go where exactly, though?  It wasn’t as though the school didn’t have on record where she lived, and they would certainly send someone around to inquire, or more likely just call the police…or MI5.  And that would be bad.  They would ask questions she couldn’t answer.  They wouldn’t let her wander around the country unmonitored.

For goodness’ sake, they’d tell her parents!

Although for that matter, what _was_ she going to tell her parents when they asked why she suddenly needed to disappear?  She might get a considerable bit of freedom for being an exceptionally clever and well-behaved child, but no parents would let a girl as young as her go on extended holiday without a reason, and a good one at that.

She was out of the school and jogging along the sidewalk.  Perhaps it was her own doing, or perhaps the sky was sufficiently overcast, but she cast no shadow.  She set a course for home as she considered the ramifications of telling her parents.

First, would they believe her?  Not until she showed them, she knew, but then they would.  It would take too long for them to accept it, though, and she had limited time before people started looking for her.  They would want to consider every angle of this new conundrum before they decided on a course of action—they were people of science, after all.  That’s how they worked.  You don’t pull a tooth until you’ve done all the tests to confirm it has to go, and even then you take time to figure out anesthetic and procedure and all that before you actually get around to doing anything.

In this, her parents would slow her down.

With about half a mile to go, she started planning what she would take with her.  She had lost her backpack, but she had a duffel she could carry without too much trouble.  A couple changes of clothes, a sleeping bag, toothbrush and toothpaste, her sock full of birthday money, plenty of food, maybe—if there was room—a couple of books?  Definitely at least a notebook and some pencils….

She was really doing this.  This was really happening.  She was running away from school, from the government, from home.

* * *

 

Harry and Ron wore identical expressions of displeasure as they stood over their potion.  Ron continued stirring it as Harry rifled through the textbook, trying to see where they had messed up.

The blond boy at the next station snickered as Ron took a puff of rancid brown smoke to the face and hastily leant away from the cauldron.  The boy’s potion was bubbling nicely and smelled faintly of peppermint, and this earned him a very dirty look from a very disgruntled Weasley.

In response, the blond turned to Harry and said, “Pity you got stuck with such a useless partner.  If I were you, I’d start choosing better _before_ I started failing Potions.”

“Hey, shut your mouth, Malfoy!” Ron said heatedly as his orange hair began to curl from the fumes.

“Ten points from Gryffindor for that comment, Mr. Weasley, and another ten for the odor befouling my classroom at the moment,” their professor, one of Riddle’s men, said as he swooped down to examine their products.  “Very nice, Draco.  There is hope yet that first years might actually be capable of reading instructions.”

He moved on after Vanishing Harry and Ron’s potion (“ _You weren’t going to salvage it at this point anyway_ ”).  Ron attempted to glare holes through his back as Harry stared dejectedly at the empty cauldron and tried to ignore the thought that Malfoy might have a point about his impending failure in this class.

“Excuse me,” Harry said cautiously, and the boy turned to him with raised eyebrows.  He nodded to the professor.  “I don’t think he’ll tell me what we did wrong if I ask him; could you explain how you made that?”

“Listen, Potter,” Malfoy answered, and Harry was surprised that he knew his name, “If the book couldn’t teach you how to brew a simple cold remedy, I’m not going to be able to explain it to you.  But I can tell you what you did wrong: you chose to team up with the wrong sort.  If you want to pass, work with someone who knows what they’re doing.”  He looked Harry straight in the eye and extended a hand.  “I could help you there.”

Harry blinked at him in disbelief and then pointedly did not move to shake the other boy’s hand.  “I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks.”  Malfoy’s face told him immediately that he had just made a new enemy, but Ron’s appreciative smile when he returned to his work station was worth it.

Maybe his father and godfather were right.  Maybe everyone in Slytherin _was_ evil.

* * *

 

“Ready Fred?” asked George.

“Ready George,” answered Fred.

George nodded, noting Fred’s nervousness.  He shoved his own down and relaxed his shoulders.  Even as he lifted his fist to knock on the door to the Phoenix Office, he felt the some of the tension leave his twin.

“Come in,” a kind voice requested politely as the door swung inwards.  With a brief shared glance, they entered a really fascinating room.  Large and circular, the walls were lined up high with some rather stuffy-looking portraits and down low with a few heavily-burdened bookshelves.  A couple of the portraits looked them over disinterestedly, but most went right along snoozing in their frames.  Various odd little objects sat around the room on tables and desks, some making noises, others flashing light, and a couple moving…breathing?

The room was arranged around a grand desk, before which waited two chairs and behind which sat a very ancient wizard in a tall, pointed purple hat.  Piercing blue eyes examined the twins from behind half-moon spectacles, and magnificent white hair and beard hid much of the wizard’s glimmering violet robes.  On the high back of his chair perched the famed bird itself—Fawkes the Phoenix.

“Ah, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, thank you for taking a break from your studies to come here today.  Please, have a seat.”  They obeyed, not-so-surreptitiously examining the weird office as they did.

 _Hah, that bloke has got ears like a house-elf_ , Fred thought to himself, and he could tell without looking that George was also contemplating the unusual proportions of the man in the painting directly behind the fire-bird.

“Lemon drop?” Dumbledore offered them.

“Sorry, what?”

“It’s a Muggle candy of which I have lately grown quite fond.”  He plucked one from the bowl on his desk before offering it to the boys.

“No thank you, sir.”

“Very well, to business then.  Your father has informed me that you two are infamous pranksters?”  That wasn’t exactly what the twins had expected to hear.  Dumbledore went on, “Quite impressive, frankly, for students only in their third-year.  You must truly have a proclivity for mischief in order to be so accomplished so young.”

They grinned.  “Well, you see, sir—”

“—we have plenty of siblings to practice on—”

“—before we take our methods to market.”

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully, as though they had just taught him something of enormous import.  “He has also said that you have encountered some trouble with the Hogwarts administration.”

“Meaning Riddle, of course.”

“Of course,” Dumbledore confirmed, although it had not been a question.

“We actually have a lot to thank ol’ Riddle for,” George pointed out.

Fred agreed, “Yeah, without him and his lackeys, we might never have had reason to invent our signature Puking Pastilles.”

“Or about half of our other products,” George put in.

“So there’s something good the great toe-wart has done,” Fred concluded.

“He motivated us,” George explained.

“Of course though,” Fred drawled, leaning forward in his chair, “you’re not terribly interested in our candy, are you?”

Dumbledore smiled ruefully.  “I’m afraid it’s not the type of candy I take interest in, no.”  He punctuated that sentence by popping another lemon drop into his mouth.  “I have heard from your father that you have developed a means of unobtrusive eavesdropping?”

“George…”

“Yeah, Fred?”

“Show him the ears.”


	4. Fight and Flight

Okay, think.  Don’t panic.  Think.

Think quickly.

Clothes.  She would need clothes, just like any other trip.  Warm clothes.  Pajamas?  Sure.  Spare shoes?  Good.  Just one pair, because they’re heavy.  Money - the entire sock fund.  First aid kit - good idea!  Gloves, even if it was only September.  Umbrella.  Soap.  Toothbrush.  Hair bands.  Nail clippers.  Floss.

What else?

What else?

Sleeping bag.  Pillow?  Too cumbersome.  (Maybe a small one…?)

What else?

Books….  Too heavy.  Even paperbacks?  Maybe one...or two….

Which ones?

Too little time to choose.  She picked two at random from her To Read pile and stuffed them in her bag.

What else?

Pens, pencils, notebook.

What else?

What else?

What else?

Nothing else.

She closed her bag and hoisted it experimentally.  She could carry it, although it would get heavy after a little wh -

FOOD!

Gosh, she was stupid.  Nonperishables.  Okay.  Water too - that’d be heavy.  Bring a bottle, refill at public fountains?  It would work.  She tossed out one of her bulkier sweaters and one of the books (the smaller one) and scurried down the hall to the kitchen.  Inside a cupboard were granola bars, dried fruit, and crackers, in another was a little jar of peanut butter, and in another was her mother’s good green water bottle.  The bag still closed, a little heavier now, and she pulled the strap over her head and onto her opposite shoulder.

And then she left.

It occurred to her halfway down the block that she should have left a note for her parents.  She turned right around, unable to subject them to any more worry than the situation demanded.  She had her hand on the doorknob when she _felt_ something.

It was a strange, tingly sort of feeling, and it raised the hair on the back of her neck.  Her every instinct urged her to run, but they were overruled by the thought of her parents, worried after the school called about her disappearance, frantic once they saw the wake of her packing frenzy, crying when the authorities came to ask questions or when they reported her missing.  No, she had to give them _something_.

But something was wrong.  So she crept to a window and peeked over the sill.

There were people in her living room, and that had her backing away on reflex.  She immediately and discreetly took off, staying away from the street and cutting quietly through her neighbors’ backyards.  When she was out of sight of her house, she sprinted as fast as she could.

Right now it was most imperative to get away, away from the imposing figures in her house with their dark cloaks and masks.  But eventually she would need to choose a destination more specific than “away.”

Hermione knew to avoid predictable locations - homes of friends and relatives, places where she was known to go frequently.  The more randomly she chose her destination, the more difficult it would be to anticipate her movements.

There was a part of her that wanted to take off into the woods, but it was easier to detect a person among trees than it was to find a _specific_ person among other people: a needle in a haystack versus a needle in a needlestack.  So instead, she went down into the first train station she could find and purchased a ticket for far away.

She pulled out her book as the train lurched into motion and sat with it open on her lap.  There were only three other people in the car: a snoozing elderly lady, a uni-aged girl staring out the window, and a man reading a newspaper.  Hermione tried to relax, but she felt as though her stomach was tied in knots.  Who were those people?  How had they gotten into her home?  What did they want with her, and would they hurt her parents?  The thought made her feel ill.

Was she any safer now?  What if she accidentally made something happen again?  There were witnesses here - none were looking her way at the moment, but what if one of them remembered her face and reported her when she inevitably became a missing person?

As soon as she was alone, she would have to change her appearance.  There were scissors in her first aid kit, and maybe she could figure out how to manipulate her coloration...then again, doing experiments on herself didn’t seem the smartest idea….

Her eyes were unfocused, still on the first page of her book.  She idly flipped the page and continued pretending to read as she argued with herself on the merits of changing her hair, eye, and skin color.  If only she knew how to turn herself invisible deliberately.

Something caught her attention - a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye -

She froze when she saw it and tried to turn it off.  She hadn’t even realized she was doing it!  That in itself was unusual, but it was also strange that she couldn’t stop the little black-and-white pictures on the front of the man’s newspaper from moving.  She glared at the newspaper, concentrating hard, until finally the images stuttered to a stop.

Immediately the man lowered his newspaper and met her eyes.

He looked to be about middle-aged, thin, and white, with brown hair a little thinner and a little grayer than it probably was in his youth.  When he spoke to her, his voice was subdued.

“Did you do that?”

Hermione glanced nervously at the other passengers - neither were paying them any attention.  “I’m sorry, sir?”

“I don’t suppose you would know how to make them move again?” he asked, motioning to his paper.  “This fellow here seems to have frozen with a very unflattering expression.”

Hermione’s wide-eyed stare was the only response he received.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I haven’t been very polite.  My name is Remus Lupin, and I don’t mean to frighten you, Hermione.  I know what you can do.  I’ve been sent to offer you some help.”

She glanced again at the other two people.

“Don’t worry - they’re friendly.  A little extra security is never a bad idea.”  The younger woman looked over at her and winked before turning to stare out the window again.  “We can speak freely here.”

Hermione nodded slowly.  “What kind of help are you offering?”

“You have attracted the attention of some very bad people, and I don’t want to scare you, but they do pose a real danger.  You were right to run away, although I doubt you knew all you were running from.  My companions and I are part of an organization called the Order of the Phoenix, and we exist to help people like you - people who were born into a non-magical family but are able to do magic.”

So there _were_ other people like her.  “But how do I know that you’re not one of those very bad people?”

Mr. Lupin smiled reassuringly.  “You don’t, not really.  But, I might point out, if I did mean you harm, then I’d have already won: you’re alone and outnumbered, and until a moment ago, unaware of me.  I wouldn’t need to try to win you over.  If I am a bad guy, then I’m a very inefficient one.”

Fair enough.  Also, nothing about him made her hackles rise, not like the masked people in her living room had.  “So where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere, unless you agree to come with me.  Just to be clear, you’re free to go if you choose to, Hermione.  But wherever you go, your life would be in danger.  If you do decide to come with me, you’ll be placed into the protective custody of the Order of the Phoenix - you’ll have a safe place to live for the present, and you’ll be able to consult with an advisor about finding a permanent solution that will ensure your safety and happiness.”

“What about my parents?”

“We’ll get in touch with them and tell them what has happened and how they can best protect themselves.  The people who are after you aren’t targeting your parents, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t hurt them in their efforts to get to you.”

Hermione swallowed hard.  She still had many questions, and she still had a stomach trying to tie itself in knots out of fear.  Maybe she could have survived on her own for a while, but now that she had an offer of help, she knew better than to let it go by. “All right, Mr. Lupin.  Take me to the Order of the Phoenix.”

* * *

They were minding their own business, Harry and Ron would later swear to an irate Professor Carrow, not that it would help their case.  To their credit, it was mostly true.  The young Gryffindors had been on their way back from dinner when they had run across Draco Malfoy and a few other Slytherins in an empty corridor, _and wasn’t that just perfect_.

While Harry was entirely willing to keep his eyes trained ahead and move to the side of the hall to let them pass, he seemed to be the only one eager to walk away.  He was forced to look over when Malfoy called out, “Hey, Potter!  Still letting Weaselbee trail after you like a pathetic orange puppy?  You know you could have done a lot better than him.”

“Shove off, Malfoy,” Ron retorted, approaching the other children menacingly.  Harry hoped he wouldn’t start a fight, as he didn’t like the odds of four-on-two, even if two of their opponents were the towering buffoons Crabbe and Goyle.  Unlike them, Draco obviously knew his way around a wand, and Harry had no idea if the girl with them did as well.

“Ignore him, Ron, come on,” Harry said, trying to get the message across without sounding like he was pleading.  He turned and kept walking, hoping his friend would follow.  His only warning was a hastily muttered _Locomotor Wibbly_ before he was hit square in the back with a jelly-legs jinx.

“That was rude, Potter,” the girl advised him as he wobbled a couple steps before falling on his face.  “You should listen to people when they’re talking to you.”

“Yeah,” added Goyle.

“Sorry, didn’t catch your name,” Harry snipped from the floor, glaring up at her through glasses knocked askew by her jinx.

“Undo it, NOW!” Ron ordered her, taking no care to avoid a similar sentence of ‘rude.’  Harry preemptively fumbled his wand out of his robes and tried to think of a better course of action than hurtling it at Malfoy’s head as hard as he could.

A scowl spread across her face, although she didn’t look away from Harry.  “Gryffindors!  Why can’t Gryffindors understand simple things like manners?”

“Well, Parkinson, if they were bright enough to do that,” said Malfoy, pointing his wand straight at Ron’s nose and causing him to take a half-step back, “they wouldn’t be in Gryffindor.”

An idea occurred to Harry.  It wasn’t a brilliant idea, but he really didn’t have anything better, and this was one he had seen his father perform a thousand times –

“ _Titillando_!” he shouted, flourishing his wand at the group of Slytherins.  He was lucky, and the spell grazed Parkinson’s arm, causing her to double over in laughter as ghostly purple hands mercilessly tickled her sides.  As soon as her eye contact was broken, he felt the jinx lift from his legs and scrambled to his feet, wand whirling to point at Draco just in time to see the beginning of an incantation on his lips.

No spell erupted from the end of his wand, however, since Ron tackled him to the ground before he had finished speaking.  While this did save Harry from whatever Malfoy would have served him, it was probably not Ron’s best decision ever, since it immediately brought Crabbe and Goyle descending on him.

Harry wasn’t a very big kid, so it would have been a better tactical decision to stand back and start throwing Tickling Hexes at the dogpile on the ground.  However, eleven-year-old boys aren’t known for their brilliant tactical thinking, so Harry instead hurled himself into the fray in defense of his friend.

By the time Professor Carrow rounded the corner and sent them all sliding away from each other with a flick of her wand, Harry’s head was throbbing and his side hurt with each shallow breath.

“Brawling like Muggles,” the witch said, hobbling towards them on stubby legs.  “Mr. Malfoy, what is the meaning of this?”

Draco was bleeding a bit from his nose, and he made his efforts to stem the flow with his sleeve very obvious.  “Professor, we were minding our business when these Gryffindors attacked us.”

“That’s not true—”

“Look what Weasley did to my face!”

“He was about to—”

“Enough!” Alecto Carrow wheezed, shaking her head.  “Revolting.  To the hospital wing with you, Mr. Malfoy.  Parkinson, make sure he gets there in one piece—it’s apparently unsafe to walk the halls on one’s own with all these militant Gryffindors on the loose.”

“But—”

“Enough, Weasley!  I don’t recall asking for your input!”  She glanced over to Crabbe and Goyle.  “You two may go.  It’s clear you weren’t the instigators of this kerfuffle.”

That left Ron, Harry, and a smirking Muggle Studies professor.  “If my memory serves, this is the second time in as many weeks that you’ve instigated a confrontation with other students.”  While the confrontation bit was fair, Harry would not have considered their role to have been instigation by any stretch of the imagination.  “This is intolerable.  I’ve half a mind to send you to the headmaster.”

Harry instantly felt as though he had walked through a ghost.

“Fortunately for you, the headmaster is away today, so it’ll have to be detention.  You’ll both be in my office tomorrow night at eight sharp.  See if you can go until then without attacking anyone.”

Ron opened his mouth to protest and Harry elbowed him in the ribs.  Professor Carrow walked by, leaving the two first-years fuming in the corridor.

Ron’s face was as red as his hair.  “I can’t believe them, Harry!  This is bloody ridiculous!”

Harry clutched at his bruised side and nodded.  “Let’s just get back, yeah?  I think I still have some chocolate frogs in my trunk, wouldn’t mind one of those.”

Ron scowled, but accompanied him back to their dorm, complaining about the Muggle Studies professor the entire way.  “There has to be something we can do!”

“Why don’t you ask Fred or George?” Harry suggested as he dug around in his trunk.  “They’ve been getting into trouble for long enough to know their way around it.”

In reply, Ron flopped onto his mattress, somehowmanaging to make the motion look violent.  Harry threw a chocolate frog at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Updates will be eventual. Comments are welcome, if you are so inclined.
> 
> Best Wishes, Lysces


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